Chapter 2

Silicia sat in on Fred's sessions for a bit over a week, gaining an understanding of her job and doing her best to make a good impression on the children. Once or twice the schedule on the wall of the 8th floor lobby said that she would be helping out with serving at meal time, which she took as the chance to ingratiate herself that it was likely meant to be.

For the most part the children were surprisingly subdued, quietly reading or studying at meal time and politely answering questions with only the occasional rude joke or prank. When Fred had told her they'd been specifically selected by the project heads, she'd thought he'd meant for their grades.
Although it made little sense to her, as she started having unsupervised one-on-ones with them it became clear to her that they had been selected for their personalities.

---

"Would you say you feel like you've been negatively affected by the move into the facility?" She asked, peering at a young boy over her clipboard.

It was only a two year program, so the students were young and would be young still when they left them. In many ways, it was the perfect trial run, cleverly maximizing the good publicity while keeping costs comparatively low. If the gamble turned out well, the company would doubtlessly launch a more extensive program, and Silicia was hoping to prove herself worthy of being kept on for it.

"It's scary to not know the place yet, I guess," the boy answered hesitantly, his hands fidgeting in his lap. 'Nervous disposition', Silicia noted down.

As the weather turned, Silicia settled in. Her desk was still sparsely decorated, mostly because of how long she wavered on picking a colour scheme for the office. Eventually she went with warm fall colours, but first she'd dragged Mira around an Ikea for almost two hours looking exclusively at the different throw blankets they offered. It was important to her to create a coherent space with positive associations.

The children eyed each new piece of decor that appeared with mute interest, but rarely commented on anything, with the exception of the box of fidget toys that found a home on the corner of her desk and which was very well received.

The scope of what was asked of her in her weekly reports gradually expanded, which was to say it got more and more abstract. While to begin with she was collecting standard questionnaire answers, enumerating hobbies and friends, soon she was reporting about fears, about character and deeply held insecurities. In short, she was building a profile. Or, many profiles. Evaluating a whole person was a scary power to exercise - though Silicia supposed that really, she held it over anyone she knew. Here it was made all the more daunting by the monotony of it.

She honestly got the sense it was less the effectiveness of their own learning programs, and more the dynamics of the human mind itself that Frinet was studying. Luckily, that was what she'd studied too.

---

"Miss Dale?"

The girl had stayed in her seat even after their session officially concluded, clearly working up to something. Her mousy brown hair fell in front of her eyes with her head lowered as it was, hiding her expression from Silicia. She could hear her swallow nervously in the small quiet room.

"What is it, Celia?"

"I'm sorry if this is mean, but why is your hair so short?"

Silicia cocked her head to the side, weighing her answer.

"Because I like it that way."

"But aren't you a girl like me? Doesn't anyone stop you cutting it?"

The girl looked up finally, and Silicia froze under the earnest look in her wide eyes.

"You don't have to have long hair to be a girl, you know," she said very lamely, leaning her chin on her hand and smiling at Celia like she felt at all qualified to explain the societal nuances of gender expression to a preteen.

The girl's eyebrows drew together like she was thinking very hard about this. Silicia made a note to talk to whomever was responsible for maintaining the children's hair cuts, and then added a less empathetic note to Celia's report sheet.

---

"See," Mira started, in a tone that meant she'd been thinking about this for weeks, "If I perfectly copied the connections in your brain and ran that file on an emulator- would that be you or just an AI do you think?"

"I think that would matter very little to anyone but said emulation," Silicia quipped, spearing a piece of bell pepper with her fork.

Across the table Mira grinned, wide and showing all her teeth.
She'd been talking a lot about constructing consciousness recently, and that had been the answer she was looking for, judging by her expression.

"I really think if one wanted to create an intelligent program, it is just the most effective option to take what we already have," she'd said on a different occasion, while they were stopped at the side of the road to reorganize the groceries in Silicia's bag.

"There is just no need to go bottom up on this - besides. You know the complexity of a human brain? It takes so much to even make basic decisions. Starting from nothing by running algorithms of increasing complexity is just an absurd waste of power, let alone time."

She was clearly just wanting to get validation about an argument she'd had at work. Silicia had gingerly placed a lightly bruised mango on a packet of dried pasta and did not ask why Mira would be attempting to simulate consciousness in the first place.

"Is that even possible?" she'd asked instead, and Mira had frowned.

"Well, theoretically it should be."

Entire Work

Last Chapter

Next Chapter